A Northwoods Almanac for 12/25/20 - 1/7/21
Christmas Bird Count - Manitowish Waters Area
The Manitowish Waters Christmas Bird Count took place on 12/18, a frosty and rather windy morning, but one with very little snow on the ground which made it easy to walk into some sites. This was the 28th annual count that we have conducted for this area, and it was a real mixed bag. For those of us who drove one of the four quadrants within the 15-mile-wide count circle, it was one of the quietest counts ever. Mary and I drive the southwestern quad, an area mostly around Powell Marsh and just into Lac du Flambeau, and in over four hours of searching, we were able to only find nine species of birds, two of which had little business still being here (a wood duck and a black duck). And of the species we found, we had very low numbers - it was truly QUIET!
Conversely, at our home feeders in Manitowish where we’ve fed birds now for 36 years running, we had 17 species of birds and in reasonably good numbers. We had 20 evening grosbeaks, a species we haven’t seen in any good numbers for over two decades, and six pine grosbeaks, a species that we often get but which have been absent the last two years. Common redpolls showed up last week, and we had at least 20 of those as well.
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| male evening grosbeak, photo by Bob Kovar |
What it tells us, which isn’t news but another confirmation of what we’ve observed over all these years, is that the birds will be where the most abundant food is. That’s such an obvious statement, but you’d still think there would be abundant food in the many wilder habitats of the Northwoods. Such is not the case every year. We look for cones on conifers, and seeds on hardwoods, and this year is poor for nearly all species other than white spruce and eastern hemlock. We had trouble finding any white pines, balsam firs, or tamaracks with cones, and the birches had no seeds to speak of. The wild cupboards are generally rather bare, so the birds that are here seem to be focusing on feeders where the menu is reliable.
We ended up with 30 species of birds on our Manitowish Waters Count, well above our average of 24, but only because we had oddities like the wood duck and black duck, plus a common merganser and a belted kingfisher. We also have a couple grackles and a red-winged blackbird that continue coming to our feeders despite the fact they, too, should have migrated by now (if you’re interested in seeing the complete count list, go to my blog at www.manitowishriver.blogspot.com).
It’s fun scouring the area for birds, but if we could somehow organize all the people to do the count who feed birds in their backyards, we’d really have some good numbers and a better picture of the birds spending the winter with us.
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| common redpoll, photo by Bev Engstrom |
Bee Happy
As newbie beekeepers, we’re constantly learning things about our bees. To state the obvious, winter is a time of profound stress for honey bees, and the risk of starvation or freezing, and thus a total die-off of the hive, is very real. To survive, the bees swarm together to maintain a hive temperature in the center of the cluster at around 59°F regardless of the outside temperature. The honey bee workers, which are all females, huddle, heads pointed inward, around the queen and her brood to keep them warm. Worker bees on the outer layer insulate their sisters. It’s cold - around 40°F - on the outer edge of the cluster, and as temperatures fall, the cluster tightens, and the outer workers pull together.
It’s a true democracy in the hive. When the workers on the outer edge of the cluster get cold, they push to the center of the group, and the inner bees move out to take a turn shielding the group from the winter weather.
There have to be enough bees in the hive, too, to generate all that heat. To give you an idea of the number of bees necessary in a single hive to sustain the constant heat, one study found that a colony of 18,000 bees lost 35% of its population, while a colony of 4,500 lost fully 85% of the adults. So, generally speaking, the larger the population, the better, as long as they’re not overcrowded.
It should be noted that early in the winter the worker bees force the useless drone bees, the males, from the hive, letting them starve. Work or don’t eat is the first commandment, and since the drones don’t work and they would eat too much of the precious winter honey stores, they are booted out.
The worker bees actively generate heat within the hive by feeding on honey for energy, and then shivering, vibrating their flight muscles but keeping their wings still, to raise their body temperatures. With thousands of bees constantly shivering, the temperature at the center of the cluster can warm up to as much as 93°F.
All these thousands of bees have to have enough stored honey to support themselves throughout the six months of a northern Wisconsin winter. So, we’ve left around 70 pounds of honey in the hive, which, as we’ve been told, should be enough to tide them over. We also made a hardened block of sugar the width and length of the hive and two inches thick, and placed it on top of the hive frames for additional nutrition should the honey run out.
So, what do they do in there the whole winter besides clustering together and shivering to generate heat? We just read that within the darkness of the hive, the queen is somehow able to detect the winter solstice, and starting soon after, she will begin laying more and more eggs. She knows it’s time to start the process of getting the hive ready for spring even if it’s many months away, and she will continue to lay more eggs all the way through spring.
Humidity can be a major killer in the hive, too. So, we have to make sure moisture can escape. We do this via a hole we make in the hive, and we also place an absorbent board on top of the hive to take-up excess moisture.
We’ll see how it all turns out come later April when the warming sun and the first flowers will beckon the bees to emerge. We’ll be amazed if they’ve survived, but they know what they’re doing - all we’re now asked to do is to be patient.
At the last meeting of the Royal Geographical Society of London, the EarthWatch Institute came to a startling conclusion. They declared that bees are the most important living being on the planet, and for good reason -70% of the world’s agriculture is dependent on pollination that happens exclusively by bees.
Ice-up Data
Woody Hagge has kept ice-up and ice-out data on Foster Lake in Hazelhurst for 45 years running (I wish it was 100 years of data, but then Woody would have to be a pretty old guy). Foster Lake iced-up this winter on 12/2. The average date in the previous 44 years was 11/27. So, although our October was quite cold and it appeared our lakes would ice-up early, our warm November temperatures held ice formation off for most of our area lakes until into December.
Snowy Owls Arriving in Wisconsin
One of the largest irruptions of snowy owls in recent history was the winter of 2017-2018, when 280 snowy owls were documented in the state. This year, however is very similar to totals from the past two years, but well below that of significant irruption years. As of 12/10, approximately 47 snowy owls have been reported, with most being seen in eastern WI.
Snowies like to hang out in terrain similar to their northern tundra home, which translates in Wisconsin into open areas along bodies of water, in agricultural fields and even urban settings like airports. In those habitats, they will perch on anything they can find — telephone poles, fence posts, breakwaters, etc.
Inland in Northern Wisconsin, our nearly contiguous forests rarely offer the open habitat snowies like. Thus, they fly over us for the better hunting grounds in central and southern Wisconsin. If we do see them in our area, it’s almost always at airports, in large open wetlands, or even in cemeteries.
Unlike other owls, snowy owls are active during the day, and in particular around dawn or dusk. Note that they do feed on waterfowl, so some of the most common sightings take place along breakwaters on Lake Michigan, Chequamegon Bay, and the Bay of Green Bay.
Celestial Events
It’s been a mild December, and as of this writing (12/20), the Manitowish River below our house has yet to ice-up, though I’m betting it will by Christmas Day. The full moon (the “Popping Trees” or “Long Night” Moon), occurs on 12/29. On New Year’s Day, we’ll be up to a whopping 8 hours and 44 minutes of daylight, five minutes more than we received on Winter Solstice, 12/21. That may not seem like much, but for all of Earth’s flora and fauna, nothing is so fundamental as the length of daylight - they’re all tuned in.
The Earth will be at perihelion, its closest passage near the sun, on 1/2, a mere 91.4 million miles away, or about 3.1 million miles closer than during aphelion on July 5.
The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in the early morning of 1/3, but the light of the nearly full moon will pretty much wash them out. They average 40 meteors per hour. The meteors will radiate from just below the Big Dipper, but they appear in all parts of the sky.
The sun will rise one minute earlier beginning on 1/5, the first time since June 10.
November Temperatures The combined global average temperature over the land and ocean surfaces for November 2020 was 1.75°F above the 20th century average of 55.2°F. This was the second warmest November in the 141-year global record, behind the record warm November set in 2015 which was +1.82°F. The 10 warmest Novembers have all occurred since 2004, and the top five warmest Novembers have all occurred since 2013.
Australia had its hottest November, which featured multiple severe heat waves, while persistently above-average temperatures were measured in Siberia and the Arctic. Norway, Sweden and England also set national records for their hottest November.
Thought for the Week
“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.” - Walt Whitman
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